I Promise You Eternal
by Koakuma Tsuri
Summary: 30/100: Love. The lovers meet again for one night only. Sephiroth/Genesis. Sequel to No.29 "On The Other Side". Angsty yaoi-fluff. Post-DoC.


30/100: Love. Sephiroth/Genesis  
OH! Shameless amounts of angsty fluff here. I just can't help it.  
More Post-DoC Genesis? Oh yeah, this is the sequel to "On The Other Side"...

Disclaimer - Genesis, Sephiroth, Nero, Weiss and Cloud belong to Square, and not me... obviously, geeze D:

* * *

**Love**

I Promise You Eternal

Another night like all the others: dark and cold with a slight breeze that kept the sky clear from a thick blanket of clouds. The stars shone brightly above him, but Genesis never looked up at them anymore. Though his eyes were constantly open, he couldn't see the world around him any longer.

Banora looked just the same but it felt completely different. No matter how much the WRO strived to rebuild the village and cultivating the orchards back to perfection, they could never bring back the ones that Genesis had killed.

He had killed everyone, and although he could never truthfully admit to ever liking any one of them, he could not deny that he missed them.

A razor sharp gust of wind tore through him, so icy he had to hug his jacket close to himself and raise his knees up to his chin to settle down again, shivering. His hair wavered out around him, dancing like snakes in the air. Once he would have thought this annoying and he would've reached back to tame them, but they were at a length now that they just could not be stopped. Although, Sephiroth's hair was longer still, the redhead wondered why it never once showed any hints of defiance.

Sephiroth…

Genesis collapsed in on himself, sighing quietly and succumbing to his bitter-tainted memories.

Their beginning was innocent, just curious kisses in shady, lonely corners; spars in the VR room in the dead of night that always ended in the redhead pinned against a wall, panting for breath. It was during one of those sessions that something about their relationship changed, taking what they had and adding a new twist and suddenly, they weren't just two teenagers that were sexually interested in each other – they were lovers.

Genesis still didn't regret his decision: the way he smirked and closed the distance between them for good with a single, rhythmic rocking of his hips into the body of Sephiroth who didn't have the strength within himself to make it stop.

It was bliss, the first time and every time, no matter where they were. It was something sentimental that Genesis would've dismissed as foolery when he was younger, but now… Now that he had time to reflect upon the things that made a human's life bearable, he found that killing, what had once been his sole purpose for existing, was not listed among any of them, whilst sentimental romance most certainly was.

When he was a teenager, sex was just something to pass the time, to release all the day's tensions and let himself go wild somewhere other than the battlefield… it wasn't until he took that vice away from himself did he come to realise just how much it really meant to him, but by that stage, Sephiroth was the one who was twisted and their last time together was just….

Genesis swallowed the lump in his throat, hugging his knees closer, burring his face away from the cold wind; away from the world he didn't belong in…

Those last few moments he spent with Sephiroth took everything from him; left him feeling so empty… was that how Sephiroth felt when he had left the company? No… Genesis didn't resort to physical violence; he never would, regardless of what others may have thought. Genesis was spoilt, hot tempered and volatile, but he cherished what he loved and would let no harm come to it…

Those last few moments he spent with Sephiroth, before the younger got up and wandered off to meet his 'Mother', just proved to Genesis how weak he was, how much power Sephiroth had over him and just how far and hard he had fallen for the other man despite what he promised himself… Genesis realised many things in his 4 years of complete silence and solitude.

It was he, not Hojo, who had created the perfect monster.

Another gust of wind that rattled through the leaves of the trees above and below him earned another shiver, but not like the ones that echoed throughout his body when too strangely warm hands pressed against his back, massaging tense and tired muscles like they had the talent of years' worth of experience.

Leather rubbed against leather, never staying still for more than a second before they transferred from his back and shoulders, to his front, venturing into the warmth of his jacket and pushing him back into another body.

There was a curve on the lips behind him, he could sense too easily, leaning back into those strong, black-clad arms until their armour met in the middle, the cold metal's kiss was muffled by the wind.

Genesis raised his right hand, reaching back to tie into long silver silk hair and tilted his head to the side, wordlessly inviting lips to explore his neck.

He waited silently for these tender, affectionate caresses to snap, becoming bitter and venomous in next to no time, for those sharp nails to dig in and bruise his skin even through the leather. This had happened more than once in his time alone, an effect of mako-withdrawal one of Strife's friends had explained. In all of those hallucinations, he had just laid there, watching as the Sephiroth of his subconscious - all of his fears manifested into that he loved most - extracted his debauched revenge upon his body. It was what he deserved. Nothing more and nothing less.

"Sephiroth," He whispered, voice carried by the air, when soft lips rained pleasant attention down upon his neck. He wished that this apparition could talk, he hadn't heard the General's deep purring voice in so long, and he missed it as much as he missed the man it belonged to.

Then he heard such a voice gently murmur "Genesis," in his ear. It didn't even take a second for him to react: he yelped and tried to jump away, but he was held too tightly in arms that should not have been there.

"Genesis, calm down." The General hushed, his hands making soft, stroking movements along the elder's chest. However, where as before Genesis had been relaxed, lost inside a daydream, all of his muscles were now tensed, spring loaded and ready to defend himself if the moment called for it.

Sephiroth pulled him back down into his arms, spreading his legs so that Genesis could lie between them, with his head against a bare chest. "I'm not going to hurt you again,"

"You're de- you should be- you can't be here…" Genesis struggled to find words with a tongue that was too busy screaming to be used in a different manner.

"Aerith," The silver haired SOLDIER started, and for a little while it seemed like that was the only thing he was going to say, but he finally took another breath and continued. "She saw the way I watch you day after da-"

"You watch me?"

"Of course," He replied, somewhat indignantly. Genesis didn't reply so he went on. "She negotiated with the planet and allowed me to come down to see you,"

There was still no reply from the redhead, who had yet to settled back down.

"Genesis, I watched you, heard you, I know exactly what you're thinking. What I became is a nightmare of the planet, not who I am n-"

"-How can you still…" _love me_ - those words deserted him as soon as he was ready to let them come, "After all I did to you,"

Sephiroth smiled, pressing his face in the curve of Genesis' neck, kissing the skin he found there before venturing back out into the snappish midnight Banora breeze. "I forgave you long ago. You've paid your debts to the world, Genesis,"

"Then why won't it just let me die?" He said, bitterness as plain in his voice as the stars were in the sky.

"You made a promise to Weiss and Nero, didn't you? A promise to keep them safe,"

Genesis mumbled something incomprehensible, but it sounded as though he was admitting defeat. He did shuffled around, turning on long, tired legs to face Sephiroth for the first time in more than 4 years. The hair around the General's face was longer than he ever remembered, actually flowing down his chest now, where as before they had fallen short just past his chin, and those beautifully feline green eyes had completely lost the insane glimmer that they had held that one night…

Genesis' fist collided with Sephiroth's cheek the second that passed his mind.

Taken completely by surprise, the General fell back onto the grassy ground behind him and remained there as Genesis stood on all fours above him, just inches away from his lips.

"How can I trust you after what you did to me?" The redhead spat venomously, though his tone never raised.

Where those tears in those crystal blue eyes? Sephiroth wondered.

Whilst contemplating on his answer, the younger raised his fingers up again, pulling Genesis' black sweater further up his waist, until just above the SOLDIER harness, he could see a set of ugly red, crescent shaped scars that tainted otherwise porcelain skin. The very tips of his fingers ran gently over these marks. They had not healed after all these years? Or had… "You did this?"

Azure eyes averted quickly to the ground to the right of Sephiroth's head and he batted away those probing hands with a flick of his wrist. "So I… So I can't forget what I did to you… to us,"

"Genesis," Sephiroth sighed, enveloping the man in his arms, pulling him down onto him. "That's what you want to remember us by? Violence and regretted mistakes?"

Sephiroth's words were spoken so…softly, so tenderly it was like nothing Genesis had ever heard before. This was a completely new side of the General and it had taken death for it to come to light… If only the planet could see the man for what he really was – a man just like any other with weaknesses just like any lover, not a psychotic, homicidal maniac driven by an manipulative alien.

With a wobbly breath, shying back the tears that had formed, he buried his face into the warmth of Sephiroth's chest, holding him close because somehow, he just knew this wouldn't last until the morning.

"We were so much more than that, weren't we?" Black gloved hands found their way into Genesis' long red hair, twirling the longer strands around his index finger as he felt moisture on his skin.

Genesis, for all of his emotional instability, never once cried in front of another, even as a child, Angeal had told him once. This only made Sephiroth hold him closer, so tight he would be squeezing the life out of someone who wasn't a SOLDIER.

"I love your hair like this," the General spoke again. His tone was different, lighter and brighter. Only now could he understand why the redhead used to love playing with his own hair.

Genesis ventured out of the security of that black leather jacket, drying his eyes with the back of his glove. "I thought you loved it shorter,"

Their eyes met for a moment, Sephiroth breaking the gaze when he blinked. He parted his lips, wetting them once, twice, three times as he inwardly panicked over his next words. He had been saying them over and over and over again in the Lifestream, to the point of perfection, so why couldn't he say them now?

Quickly… the time was passing…

The sparkle in Genesis' eyes was fading each time he failed to voice what he wanted.

_Tell him! Just tell him_! Was that Aerith's voice in his head?

_Are you stupid? You haven't even kissed him yet!_ Was Zack's terribly helpful input.

Then lastly and most hauntingly: Angeal. _Seph, give him something to live for. _

The General was certain in that second that if it weren't for those three, he would've been lying there, gaping like a fish until the sun rose in the morning and he would have to leave Genesis again without ever letting him know:

"I love anything and everything to do with you Genesis…" But that was the easy part.

Water was building up in the blue eyes above him again.

"…I love you,"

The world stopped that second for the both of them. The wind, the noise, the far-off sounds of the village just vanished. There was no reply for the longest moment conceivable but eventually the warmest smile ever to cross Genesis' lips washed his face, softening his normally sharp features in a way that was so uncharacteristic of such a man, Sephiroth just had to lean up and capture it with his own.

Genesis' mouth was already open, showing a need that had never been there before as he kissed back with everything he had and everything he was. Planting his hands firmly either side of Sephiroth's head, as the latter moved his own in Genesis' hair the two obtained a deeper, more secure contact, neither wanting nor did they have the strength or will to break away for breath.

In fact, a loss of breath would suit Genesis' perfectly, he wouldn't have to waste time milling around living and waiting for his own time to come if he died here, now, in Sephiroth's arms.

But then what of Weiss and Nero?

Sephiroth was right, he had made a promise to his brothers, and he was sure that this would be the first promise that he would keep in his entire life.

"I love you too, Moonbeam," Genesis was still smiling when he pulled away, never venturing too far, quickly catching his breath as he nestled contently into Sephiroth's shoulder.

Another night like all the others, lying in a tangle of each other's arms and legs, staring up at the night sky above them, until the stars began to fade and colour invaded the comfortable darkness.

Nothing, especially the night, lasted long enough for the lover's liking…

Apart from their love, that is.

"I'll wait forever for you,"

"I know,"


End file.
